PODCAST · history
Read Beat (...and repeat)
by Steve Tarter
If you're like me, you like to know things but how much time to invest? That's the question. Here's the answer: Read Beat--Interviews with authors of new releases. These aren't book reviews but short (about 25-30 minutes on the average) chats with folks that usually have taken a lot of time to research a topic, enough to write a book about it. Hopefully, there's a topic or two that interests you. I try to come up with subjects that fascinate me or I need to know more about. Hopefully, listeners will agree. I'm Steve Tarter, former reporter for the Peoria Journal Star and a contributor to WCBU-FM, the Peoria public radio outlet, from 20202 to 2024. I post regularly on stevetarter.substack.com.
Episodes
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"Woodlands of the Mind" by Kevin O'Donnell and Scott Honeycutt
Not all the lessons learned at college take place in the classroom. That’s one of the takeaways from Woodlands of the Mind: Rambles Through Campus Forests by Kevin O’Donnell and Scott Honeycutt. There’s more. You learn that stately old buildings aren’t the only prominent landmarks on campus. Some...
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"The Illinois Terminal Railroad: The Road of Personalized Services" by Dale Jenkins
Passenger train service of the past is often depicted with bustling city stations and milling crowds pouring onto platforms. But that wasn’t the only way to catch the train back in the day. If you were out in the country in central Illinois, you could just stand by the track and wave. That’s the...
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"Kentucky Barracuda" by Joe Goodbody
What started as a routine genealogical search turned into a six-year research project for Joe Goodbody, a retired Army colonel and the author of Kentucky Barracuda. The book documents the 19th-century exploits of Parker Hardin French (1826-1878), an adventurer and one of the most extraordinary…
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“Agatha Christie: The Mother of the Cozy Mystery” by Nancy West
There’s more to Agatha Christie than slick plot twists and quaint settings (like the fictitious Chipping Cleghorn). Christie was an adventurous woman, said Nancy West, the University of Missouri English professor who authored the biography, the latest in the Simon & Schuster series of pocket...
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"Beneath the Wage: Tips, Tasks & Gigs in the Age of Service Work?" by Annie McClanahan
To better understand Annie McClanahan’s book, Beneath the Wage: Tips, Tasks & Gigs in the Age of Service Work, one needs only peruse recent stories such as: --the Chicago Teachers Union’s bargaining to include a demand to end student homelessness by creating 10,000 new affordable housing units...
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"The Adventures of Jelly Bean" by Amy Pollack
You can't accuse Amy Pollack of rushing into print. Although she first had the idea of Jelly Bean, a fictional fourth-grader, back when she was in fourth grade herself (1960), it wasn't until Pollack had completed more than 40 years of teaching at every level--primary, middle, high school, and...
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"A Protest History of the United States" by Gloria Browne-Marshall
"The world will be made better by those who refuse to be silent." That statement tells you where Gloria Browne-Marshall stands. A law professor atJohn Jay College in New York, Browne-Marshall is the author of A Protest History of the United States, a book that explores 500 years of protest and...
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"If I Am Coming to Your Town, Something Terrible Has Happened" by Justin Glawe
Justin Glawe's new book, If I Am Coming to Your Town, Something Terrible Has Happened, provides a reporter's account of some of the biggest news stories of the past decade. Starting with the chaos that followed the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014, If I Am Coming plunges the...
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"Sugar Coated" by Marion Nestle and Lisa Sutherland
To understand how the food business works, merely take a trip down the cereal aisle at your local supermarket. Cereal boxes represent food industry billboards: big, bold, and shouting for your (or your child's) attention, said Marion Nestle, who co-authored Sugar Coated with Lisa Sutherland.…
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"The Way Out: How To Overcome Toxic Polarization" by Peter Coleman
Toxic polarization is the division in society that pits neighbor against neighbor and family member against family member when political fervor reaches a fever pitch. It's a time when it's dangerous to be a public official, not just in Washington, but when threats are leveled at officeholders at...
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"America Unfinished" Edited by Alexandra Natapoff and Guy-Uriel Charles
“A new status quo has taken hold in Washington DC,” writes Jody Freeman, one of the Harvard Law School professors offering up short essays in America Unfinished: 250 Years of Law and Governance. “The federal government is more partisan and less professional than at any time in the modern era,”...
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"We Are Eating the Earth" by Michael Grunwald
Michael Grunwald provides another take on the climate crisis. It's not just about reducing exhaust fumes from gasoline-powered cars; it's about agriculture. The world's fossil-fuel problem is still number one, but agriculture is number two, the author maintains. Farming is taking up too much of…
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Interview with Bill Kemp, McLean County Museum of History
It’s a museum dedicated to McLean County, home to Bloomington-Normal, but the displays are as broad-based and American as apple pie: Abraham Lincoln, Route 66, and baseball. The McLean County Museum of History, 200 Main St. in Downtown Bloomington, occupies the old courthouse building where a…
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"Dreamsville" by Jon Burlingame
What was the most influential television show of the 1950s? I Love Lucy? Disneyland? Twilight Zone? Few would probably choose Peter Gunn, the private-eye show starring Craig Stevens that producer Blake Edwards launched in 1958. But a case could be made for the program. It wasn’t the plot or the...
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"Invasion of the Mind Snatchers" by Eric Burns
Television’s growth in the 1950s mirrored the rise of radio in the 1930s. Unlike radio, however, TV hasn’t looked back, demanding our attention now more than ever in the 21st century. Back in the 50s, television was still feeling its way. Early television was in black and white, screens were…
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"The Westerners" by Megan Kate Nelson
The old west came at us in a rush on 50s TV: So many shows; so many cowboys; so much history; and so much left out. Megan Kate Nelson attempts to fill some of the gaps in our frontier history in The Westerners, a book that chronicles the lives of seven remarkable individuals never depicted on TV…
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America’s Downtowns—A conversation with Erik Reader
If you have passed through small-town America in recent years, you may have noticed that, for the vast majority of towns, to use the phrase, “they ain’t what they used to be.” The downtown buildings may still be in place, but are now empty or boarded up. That’s if you even make it to the downtown...
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“Stealing America” by Linford Fisher
With the story of the American Revolution being retold as we approach this country’s 250th anniversary, we hear a lot about George Washington, Paul Revere, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Paine, among the many individuals who played a part in the formation of the United States of...
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"Born Sick in the USA" by Stephen Bezruchka
Stephen Bezruchka has worked in the healthcare field for over 50 years. A graduate of Stanford Medical School, with a public health degree from Johns Hopkins University, Bezruchka began his career by setting up a community health project in the Himalayas. He spent over 30 years practicing as an...
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“America’s Hometown Movie Houses: Please Remain Standing” by Benita VanWinkle
Benita VanWinkle likes going to the movies. She’s gone to theaters in every state of the union. But she doesn’t always stay for the main feature. Instead, VanWinkle, an art professor at High Point University in North Carolina, pursues a picture show of her own. Over the years, she’s photographed...
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"A High Price for Freedom" by Clyde W. Ford
Don’t expect a big celebration on Juneteenth (June 19) from author Clyde W. Ford, who explains in A High Price for Freedom. “What a wonderful day that first Juneteenth must have been. Fetters gone. Shackles removed. Whips silenced. Uninformed formerly enslaved men and women reveling in their...
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“Disposing of Modernity” by Rebecca Graff
If time travel ever becomes a thing, the Chicago World’s Fair held in 1893 might be one of the leading attractions for time travelers. Here was an exposition, spread across almost 700 acres in Jackson Park, some seven miles from Chicago’s Loop, that sold 27 million tickets in its six-month run....
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“The Courtyard” by Alexa Morris and Benjamin Parket
The Nazi occupation of Paris during World War II brought hardship to many, especially if they were Jewish. As German rule tightened, Jewish families were at risk of being rounded up and sent to concentration camps like Auschwitz. The Courtyard is an account of one Jewish family that survived the...
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“The Devil’s Castle” by Susanne Paola Antonetta
The horrors of the Holocaust were preceded in Nazi Germany by the conversion of five asylums and an abandoned jail, which were transformed into gas chambers, killing tens of thousands of patients. That’s a story that Susanne Paola Antonetta tells in The Devil’s Castle, a book that started with…
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“Why Q Needs U” by Danny Bate
So where did we get all these letters that children learn as their ABC’s? Danny Bate has the answer in his book, “Why Q Needs U.” Born and raised in England and now living in Prague, Bate is a linguist, writer, broadcaster, and podcaster (A Language I Love is…), Bate admits to being obsessed by...
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“A Little Piece of Cuba” by Barbara Caver
At a time when U.S.-Cuban relations have probably never been worse, there’s Barbara Caver’s “A Little Piece of Cuba,” a book that explores her own journey “to become Cubana-Americana.” Caver’s mother was born in Cuba before leaving for the United States with her family at the age of seven in…
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"Heartland" by Keith O'Brien
The saga of basketball star Larry Bird invariably culminates in the Bird-Magic Johnson story, two players who met in the most-watched basketball game of all time, the 1979 NCAA championship game between Indiana State and Michigan State, and then went on to "save" the NBA, each winning titles for...
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“The Navigator’s Letter” by Jan Cress Dondi
A true story, The Navigator’s Letter is a tale of uncanny coincidences: two friends from the same small town in Illinois join the Army Air Corps in World War II. Both become navigators. Both were assigned to B-24 Liberators. Both flew missions over Europe. Both of their planes were forced down…
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"Tigers Between Empires" by Jonathan Slaght
It’s a familiar story: the animals we’ve all known since we were children, the lions, tigers, and elephants, all disappearing from the wilds due to loss of habitat, hunters, or a changing environment. So how gratifying is it to learn that in one part of the world, a wintry forest area between...
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"Boss Lincoln" by Matthew Pinsker
Abraham Lincoln has been characterized in many ways: as a father, statesman, lawyer, writer, speechmaker, and military leader. He served as U.S. President during this country’s Civil War, grappling under the intense pressure that could have split the nation in two permanently. There are probably...
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“Ms. Mebel Goes Back to the Chopping Block” by Jesse Sutanto
Jesse Sutanto has found a unique writing formula. The author of over a dozen books including the Aunties and Vera Wong (the previous interview with Sutanto came after the publication of Vera Wong’s Guide to Snooping (on a Dead Man) treats her writing like it’s a day job. After writing an outline,...
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“The 100 Greatest Literary Characters” by James Plath, Gail Sinclair, and Kirk Curnutt
The first thing that makes a reader read a book is the characters. That was John Gardner. If the characters come alive, the novel comes alive. That’s Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Given the importance of characters, James Plath, an English professor at Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington, Gail...
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“Last of the Titans” by Richard Vinen
The date of June 18, 1940 proved to be the most important day in the lives of two of the best-known world leaders of the 20th century: Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle. World War II had taken an ugly turn in Europe with the fall of France, and both men took to BBC radio on that day to…
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"CrimeReads" articles by Keith Roysdon
An upcoming story on the CrimeReads website (https://crimereads.com/) will look at the performances of movie/TV good guys who later took on bad-guy roles and vice versa. It can only be another story by Keith Roysdon, whose previous stories on CrimeReads include looks at writers Richard Matheson…
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"Making Democracy Count" by Ismar Volic
"Making Democracy Count" by Ismar Volic Ismar Volic is one math professor who wants to use mathematics to improve our democratic process. His book, Making Democracy Count: How Mathematics Improves Voting, Electoral Maps, and Representation, examines the mathematics that govern how our election...
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“Winning the Earthquake” by Lorissa Rinehart
The first woman to serve in the U.S. congress didn’t come from New York or Boston but from Montana. Jeannette Rankin served two terms in Congress—not in succession but terms separated by more than 20 years. Among her many distinctions is that she was the only legislator to cast votes against two...
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"Show Trial" by Thomas Doherty
Groundhog Day, Ed Wood, The Big Lebowski, Dark City, and 12 Monkeys. What do these movies have in common? They were all made in the 1990s and represented a middle-level film—neither franchise nor family fare. “That’s what we’re missing at the theater nowadays,” said Thomas Doherty, the Brandeis...
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"Road to Nowhere" by Emily Lieb
In the mid-1950s, Baltimore’s Rosemont neighborhood was alive and vibrant with smart rowhouses, a sprawling park, corner grocery stores, and doctors’ offices. By 1957, a proposed expressway threatened to gut this Black, middle-class community from stem to stern. That highway was never built, but…
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"Vote with Your Phone" by Bradley Tusk
We think nothing of ordering dinner, shopping for clothes, or banking on our phones anymore. So why not vote? That’s what Bradley Tusk has been working on. In his book, Vote with Your Phone: Why Mobile Voting Is Our Final Shot at Saving Democracy, the New York venture capitalist spells out the...
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"Everybody Loses: The Tumultuous Rise of American Sports Gambling" by Danny Funt
An exploration into the perilous world of American sports gambling, journalist Danny Funt interviews the power players of the betting boom at FanDuel, DraftKings, and beyond. He relates the story of ESPN Bet, a failed attempt by the sports giant to compete with the major sports gambling…
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"Radical Cartography: How Changing Our Maps Can Change Our World" by William Rankin
Where are you with maps? Still digging in the glove compartment for that dog-eared map of Iowa? Gazing contentedly at a map of the world with Greenland as the dominant feature? Maybe you’ve got a pocket map of attractions in Downtown Chicago? Wherever you are when it comes to maps, you need to…
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"The Heartland: An American History" by Kristin Hoganson
When Kristin Hoganson came from the East to the Midwest 25 years ago to teach at the University of Illinois, she realized she had entered the heartland, that safe sanctuary that lies between the American coasts. But was it? Her book, The Heartland: An American History, delves into heartland...
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"Artificially Intelligent" by David Eliot
If you’re weary of being bombarded by claims and concerns over AI, you need to hear David Eliot talk about the subject. The author of Artificially Intelligent: The Very Human Story of AI is “the story of how artificial intelligence was born from human longing, grief, and ambition. It’s the story…
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"Troublemaker" by Carla Kaplan
When you review the life of Jessica Mitford, the activist muckraking journalist who died in 1996, you’re following someone who not only lived through world events but put her body on the line and wrote about them. That list includes the Spanish Civil War (she went to Spain as a 17-year-old...
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"The Intelligence Explosion" by James Barrat
Science fiction has long contemplated the possibility that machines could rise up against their human creators. Movies such as 2001, Terminator, Matrix, and I, Robot are part of our cultural history. But James Barrat, author of The Intelligence Explosion, suggests that it’s not out of line to…
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“The Hard Line” by Mark Greaney
The 15th in the Gray Man series is out this February. That means it’s time to talk with author Mark Greaney about the latest Court Gentry entry. Entitled The Hard Line, action takes place in Bulgaria, Nicaragua, Boston, and Washington, D.C., to list just a few of the action-packed locations...
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“The Killing Age” by Clifton Crais
You get a sense of The Killing Age by Clifton Crais, a history professor at Emory University, when you read “killing became the West’s most profound contribution to world history" in the author's preface. “The violence that created our present world of global warming is too often forgotten in the...
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“The First Movie Studio in Texas” by Kathryn Fuller-Seeley and Frank Thompson
When you think about the early days of motion pictures, you might recall the New York/New Jersey area where Thomas Edison set up shop in 1893. Maybe you reflect on those very early days when producers in search of sunshine ventured to shooting locations in Florida and pre-Hollywood California.…
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“When We Were Brilliant” by Lynn Cullen
There’s probably no brighter star in the Hollywood heavens than Marilyn Monroe. The blonde bombshell who died at the age of 35 in 1962 has been the focus of hundreds of accounts, linking her with the leading celebrities of the day—John F. Kennedy, Frank Sinatra, Joe DiMaggio, and Arthur Miller…
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"Retaining and Transitioning Businesses in Communities" by Norm Walzer and Christopher Merrett
Rural America faces serious problems. That record has been playing for decades: the lack of jobs, healthcare, housing, and internet access are just some of the low notes. Who hasn’t driven through a small town to observe empty buildings that once housed banks, hotels, or theaters and wondered…
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
If you're like me, you like to know things but how much time to invest? That's the question. Here's the answer: Read Beat--Interviews with authors of new releases. These aren't book reviews but short (about 25-30 minutes on the average) chats with folks that usually have taken a lot of time to research a topic, enough to write a book about it. Hopefully, there's a topic or two that interests you. I try to come up with subjects that fascinate me or I need to know more about. Hopefully, listeners will agree. I'm Steve Tarter, former reporter for the Peoria Journal Star and a contributor to WCBU-FM, the Peoria public radio outlet, from 20202 to 2024. I post regularly on stevetarter.substack.com.
HOSTED BY
Steve Tarter
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How many episodes does Read Beat (...and repeat) have?
Read Beat (...and repeat) currently has 301 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Read Beat (...and repeat) about?
If you're like me, you like to know things but how much time to invest? That's the question. Here's the answer: Read Beat--Interviews with authors of new releases. These aren't book reviews but short (about 25-30 minutes on the average) chats with folks that usually have taken a lot of time to...
How often does Read Beat (...and repeat) release new episodes?
Read Beat (...and repeat) publishes regularly with 301 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
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You can listen to Read Beat (...and repeat) on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Read Beat (...and repeat)?
Read Beat (...and repeat) is created and hosted by Steve Tarter.
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